Today, as the curtain closes on a tumultuous year Two Thousand Seventeen of the Common (until recently, Christian) Era, and the portents of war, of financial, social, ecological and civilisational collapse, and the gloomy dawn of a new Dark Age ruled by a small cabal of neo-feudal globalist oligarchs hang ominously in the air, the economics profession continues to do what it does best.

It has become routine to assault the “dismal science” with a dismal ignorance of what economics actually involves. Writers, students and even some social scientists from other disciplines who have very little exposure to what economists do are quick to point the finger and declare economics as a veil for vested interest, and dismiss it as a way of thinking that is fossilised in numbers.

Sometimes, though, the criticism can even come from within the economics bubble itself.

Oh the irony.

Economic theory has always been a veil for vested interest: the interest of the Usurocracy.

Economists’ “way of thinking” has been fossilised in numbers since the thirteenth century rise of cabalist theurgy: the magic equilibrium numerological ‘science’ of angelology and demonology.

Economists exist in a bubble of historical ignorance. They broadly fail to search outside their prescribed textbooks for knowledge and understanding of the true origin of the fundamental ideas and beliefs within their own discipline. Heterodox economists calling for a Reformation, or revolution in economic thinking, are just as endarkened as the orthodoxy.

Economics doesn’t need a Reformation: it needs a scientific revolution, similar to that triggered by Copernicus’s publication of “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres” in 1543. [..] This was the first great scientific revolution, and it inverted our understanding of the Universe: rather than the Sun orbiting the Earth, the Earth orbited the Sun; rather than the stars being nearby, they were far away; and gravity, not God, told the “Heavenly Bodies” how to move. [..] The revolution in astronomy that Copernicus triggered with his fundamentally different paradigm took over a century. Galileo played a key role here, by building the first serious telescope and observing four of Jupiter’s moons… [..] This revolution didn’t come peacefully, and it wasn’t led by the Ptolemaic astronomers themselves, but by new entrants to the field—including, crucially, Isaac Newton, whose equations of motion provided a mathematical explanation for why the orbits of planets were elliptical rather than circular.

Let’s unpack this. Historical context is vital.

In the Battle of Ideas between ‘science’ and ‘superstition’, as always, it’s about money:

Copernicus spent many years in Italy. Evidence suggests that ‘his’ idea crystallised while studying at the University of Padua.[2] This was the seat of libertas scholastica (academic freedom) near Venice: the fertile ground for ideas and schemes offering ‘utility’ in the confrontation, or subversion, of political or religious threats to the Venetian Republic’s profits and power. Its first offered subjects were law, and theology. Copernicus himself is said to have attributed the discovery of heliocentrism to the ancient Greek astronomer, Aristarchus of Samos.[3][4]

Galileo was a paid agent and likely dupe of Paolo Sarpi, chief of the Venetian intelligence and philosophical ridotto (think tank) networks. The controversy between Galileo and the Church was masterminded by Sarpi – his trial represented “one of the greatest public relations successes of all time.” Galileo’s status as Europe’s premier scientist followed the publication of ‘his’ astronomical findings. Sarpi was the “advisor, author, and director” of the entire project. In March 1610 he wrote that a telescope had been found in Holland two years before (my emphasis):

Once this was found, our mathematician [Galileo] of Padua and some of our other people who are not ignorant of these arts began to use the telescope on celestial bodies, adjusting it and refining it for the purpose….”[5]

The fame of alchemist and cabalist Isaac Newton and his alleged “discoveries” was also engineered by the Venetian “Deep State” network, for financial and political gain, in context of Anglo-French rivalries. The mastermind was Padua native and member of the Venetian nobility, Antonio Schinella de Conti, the duplicitous intermediary in the Leibniz-Newton calculus controversy.[6][7]

Père Conti of the French Mission in Rome, caricature by Pier Leone Ghezzi, 1674–1755. (Source: Artnet.com)

The Church hierarchy may have been empirically wrong in upholding the geocentric model of the Universe. However, the weight of emphasis given to these key historical events by modern academia abjectly fails to identify the vested financial motives underpinning the ‘scientific revolution’.

Throughout the Renaissance – also known as the Hermetic Reformation[8] – the immensely powerful Venetian oligarchy employed its sophisticated pan-European network of agents in active promotion of any ideas convenient to its financial interests. Its chief opponent, and perennial on-again-off-again antagonist or ally, was Europe’s moral and financial regulatory authority: the Catholic Church.

The Church’s teachings on usury, and a spiritual kingdom – in essence, a moral paradigm of patient endurance in suffering, and of doing good in the service of others in this life, in anticipation of spiritual reward – were anathema to a usurious patrician nobility and merchant oligarchy possessed of centuries-old envies and aspirations for earthly rule, through money and the sword.

Modern science did not begin with rare enlightened “free thinkers”, armed with reason and experimental evidence, courageously challenging the authority of superstitious obscurantism.

Nor did economic ‘science’ develop as a result of “physics envy”.

Modern science – including physics, and the ‘science’ of economics – began with thirteenth century cabalist theurgy.

Black (under cover of “white”) magic.

While the Church promoted God as the invisible force telling the Heavenly Bodies how to move (“by the Word of God”), the Venetian oligarchy promoted cabalist theurgy as the means by which man could gain control over the “spirits” controlling the motions of the Sun (gold), Moon (silver) and the planets Above. These heavenly “powers” were the key to the universal order of creation, including the world Below.

Rather than God as the invisible, personal force who could be humbly petitioned to grant requests for health and wealth “according to His will”, cabalist theurgy promoted the idea of acquiring power to command the invisible, intermediary forces responsible for health and wealth.

The secret gnosis (knowledge) of how to do this, was the Art of magic words – magic letters, embedded with magic numbers.

Magic mathematics.

The Duality Principle embedded in the double entry bookkeeping of medieval Italian merchants, and in the “rational”, pleasure/profit-maximising, magic equilibrium assumptions and equations of modern economists, is the “Enlightened” modern gnostics’ scientific title for ancient Babylonian occult philosophistry.

As proponents of black magic, the Venetian Usurocracy was initially hostile to the flourishing development of empirical science in rival Florence during the early Renaissance. Around 1600 however, the Paolo Sarpi network began rebranding the Venetian Republic as the embodiment of the most advanced and sophisticated science, representing the highest expression of scientific values.[9]

Over ensuing centuries, the Usurocracy’s network successfully smuggled its cabalist theurgic principles into all areas of modern science, promoting formalism, reductionist materialism, and in a supremely ironic example of cabalist-derived Orwellian doublethink, the fetishism of institutional (i.e, academic ‘expert’) authority.

Economists have an immensely important role in shaping the policies, regulations, and values of modern society. Few, if any, have the faintest clue that by conflating biological, material, and moral values using the balance sheet ‘logic’ of double entry, the Venetian Giammaria Ortes, and subsequent luminaries of the British Radical liberal philosophical school such as Jeremy Bentham, cleverly eliminated the “moral element”[10] from their ‘scientific’ discipline: one that was once called Moral Philosophy.

Those who do not study history, or who restrict their search for knowledge and truth to within safe reading and thinking distance of academically-approved, textbook lines of inquiry, will never discover the true origin and sign-ificance of the ideas, and (amoral) values that they practice and preach.

One wonders if St. Peter may not have been forecasting the coming of modernity’s neo-Babylonian economic theurgists, and not merely pseudo-Christian theologians, when he wrote his Second Epistle warning against false teachers:

These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.

For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.

While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption…

FOOTNOTES

[1] E. Michael Jones, “The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and its Impact on World History”, Fidelity Press (2008), p. 257 – “On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther sent 95 objections to the Catholic Church’s doctrine on indulgences to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz. According to legend, he also nailed the theses to the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg.”

[3] Owen Gingrich, “Did Copernicus Owe a Debt to Aristarchus?”, Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol. 16, no. 1 (February 1985), pp. 37–42. (cited in Wikipedia, Nicolaus Copernicus, fn. 6; online 31 December 2017) – “Copernicus was aware of Aristarchus’ heliocentric theory and cited him in an early (unpublished) manuscript of De Revolutionibus (which still survives), though he removed the reference from his final published manuscript.” (note A)

“The crucial thing is to understand what banks do. And it’s not mostly about money creation! Instead, what banks are for is helping to improve the tradeoff between returns and liquidity.

Actually, what banks do is mostly about money creation. Of a sort. See here, here, and here. But I digress.

“Like a lot of people, my insights draw heavily on Diamond-Dybvig (pdf), one of those papers that just opens your mind to a wider reality. What DD argue is that there is a tension between the needs of individual savers — who want ready access to their funds in case a sudden need arises — and the requirements of productive investment, which requires sustained commitment of resources.

Banks can largely resolve this tension, by offering deposits that can be withdrawn on demand, yet investing most of the funds thus raised in long-term, illiquid projects. (…)

The problem, of course, is the vulnerability of such a system to self-fulfilling panics: if people believe that a bank will fail, everyone will in fact want to withdraw funds at the same time — and because the bank’s assets are illiquid, trying to meet those demands through fire sales can in fact cause the bank to fail.

This then leads to the need for policy: deposit insurance and/or lender of last resort facilities to head off bank runs, and bank regulation to reduce the moral hazard from these explicit or implicit guarantees.

So, according to Professor Krugman’s defense of Bagehot banking, the alleged purpose of banks is to resolve this “tension” between the need of individuals for ready access to their funds, and the “sustained commitment of resources” required for “productive investment”. The banking system — designed in the 17th century — can “largely” resolve this tension, but is vulnerable to bank runs, and so requires complex regulation, and deposit insurance and/or central banks to support it.

Here is an alternative solution to the Diamond-Dybvig-Krugman “tension” problem.

By giving everyone a tool to create ‘money’ in the same way that banks do — by simple double-entry bookkeeping — individuals can always have ready access to funds, and make sustained commitments to productive investments. No vulnerability to bank runs. No need for complex regulation, deposit insurance, or a “lender of last resort”.

“Tension” problem solved.

This is, after all, the 21st century Paul. Things have moved on a bit.

This article by request for Renegade Inc – For Those Who Think Differently

“It’s Trump!”

As the election results poured in, usually dour Russians sat in their favourite cafes, beaming smiles, shaking hands, and cheerfully buying each other coffees, united by a common feeling of relief and celebration.

“Ok, so Hillary won’t nuke us after all.”

America’s new President-elect had pledged to “get along great” with Russia. To cooperate, rather than compete. To trade, not fight.

To Russian ears these words were music to rival Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. Russians wanted Trump, because they do not want war.

Renegade economist Sergei Glazyev aptly described Hillary Clinton as a symbol of war, reflecting that “Americans had two choices: World War Three, or multilateral peace.”

Behind the hand-wringing cries of a “shocked” western Establishment, one can almost hear the sounds of the US neocon warmongers’ Project For A New American Century beginning to rattle in its own death throes, and a new New World Order being born. As professor of political economy Mark Blyth observed, “The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neo-nationalism has just begun.”

In the week since, more “Russia-friendly” presidents have been elected in Moldova and NATO member Bulgaria. Expectations are rising that so-called “populist”, “nationalist”, and “pro-Russian” parties and presidents may well be elected in the Netherlands, Italy, France, and Germany. The very heart of Western Europe — that of ordinary people — appears to be turning to Moscow.

Prompted by the election of “drain the swamp” Donald Trump, in Russia too a long-awaited “purge” of powerful comprador elite neoliberals — the “Fifth Column” in Vladimir Putin’s government — may now be on the horizon. Minister of the Economy Alexei Ulyukaev has just been detained, subject to an investigation on serious bribery charges. Rumours are flying that more will be arrested or removed from high office shortly*. In a radio interview on Tuesday, economist and former government advisor Mikhail Khazin implied that other high flyers likely to fall include Dmitry Medvedev’s Deputy PM, Arkady Dvorkovich.

Former politician and director of the Problems issued by Globalization institute (IPROG), the economist Mikhail Delyagin says that with the election of Donald Trump, the “liberal clan” formed within Russia’s elite during Bill Clinton’s 1993-2001 presidency has now lost its western backing. Like Sergei Glazyev (A Genocide: Russia and The New World Order), he argues that after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the new Russian Federation formed a hybrid state, in which foreign and internal policies are “largely” patriotic but socio-economic policy (under the powerful neoliberal elite faction) has been a “national treason”. Delyagin predicts that the Minister of Finance, Anton Siluanov, and the head of Russia’s Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, will also lose their jobs.

While still invisible to many, Trump’s election marked what was so necessary for humanity; a turning point. A deeper reason for change. It coincided with the revival of “The Russian idea”.

Known to everyone who ever read Fyodor Dostoevsky, this idea became the case study for Russian philosophers such as Nikolai Berdyaev and Ivan Ilyin (a favourite of Vladimir Putin). “The Russian idea” offers a unique way of peaceful co-existence between different nationalities and cultures. It is an idea of higher unity that until today had only existed in the hearts and souls of Russian people. But now, it appears, it may become key to the salvation of us all.

The Russian idea holds no room for the radical individualism of the West, or such notions as an “indispensable nation” or “God’s chosen people”. There is no hierarchy or separation between “us” and “them”. One cannot be happy unless the whole of humanity is saved. Viewed in cosmic unity each person should be concerned for the well-being of every other. The same with nations.

The enormous land mass of Russia, so rich in natural resources — and so inviting for foreign invaders — forms a kind of world bridge between the West and the East. So too the Russian people embody a natural, human bridge between cultures. Many famed philosophers, historians, saints and seers — and not only Russian ones (e.g., Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West) — have long predicted that this is precisely the role that Mother Russia and her people will play in the future of our world.

In a vast country containing multiple nationalities, and united by state-endorsed Orthodox Christianity for over 1000 years — 74 years of revolutionary communism a mere aberration — Russians possess a characteristic openness and tolerance toward all peoples, religions and cultures. Even more so, a desire to understand them and have a dialogue with them. That’s where you meet Dostoevsky’s famous idea of the “Russian soul” having a generosity and sensitivity to everyone – an ability to live someone else’s tragedy and joy like your own; to let it inside oneself.

This might help explain why countless thousands of Russian people prayed for the salvation of America on Election Day last week. “Russians are responsible for everyone”, Berdyaev used to say.

Highly educated — the policy of free education up to and including university remains from Soviet days — and deeply aware of their country’s tragic history, ordinary Russians can often be heard expressing a genuine empathy for the struggles of ordinary people in the West. The memory of the horrors of the 1990s — rightly blamed on their own comprador elites rushing to adopt the “Shock Therapy” economic policies recommended by their US neoliberal “advisors” — remains painfully vivid.

To many Westerners it may come as a revelation to discover that beneath the unsmiling facade, Russians are eternal optimists. Theirs is a unique, culturally-embedded optimism, born of centuries of adversity; indeed, of simply surviving.

“We can survive anything. Only we have this thing, that we can resist anything.”

The Russian people see themselves as ultimately unbeatable in the basic fight for life. This humble form of national self-belief comes from having survived everything that external invaders and those they see as internal enemies have thrown at them over centuries; from Napoleon to Lenin, Hitler, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin.

According to Ilyin, Russia is a child of historic catastrophes. Wars were brought on Russia ceaselessly. Moscow was burnt by the Tatars, Poles and the French. Soviet Russia repelled Nazi Germany at a cost of 27 million souls. But each time Russia rose back to her feet like a Phoenix, and she flourishes again. The Russian idea of everyone’s salvation was born from her catastrophic past.

Today the whole world — despite its appearance of material well-being and technological progress — is being pushed toward a catastrophe. That is why Russia’s experience in overcoming adversity offers an important example for everyone.

As the Western powers have first encircled Russia through relentless expansion of NATO, and then imposed economic sanctions in retaliation for her entirely justified (and remarkably restrained) moves to simply defend herself and protect her “soft underbelly” — those vital, historic spheres of influence on and near to the Black Sea and Caucasus — the Russian government under President Putin has responded in a very Russian way; with flair, speed, creativity, flexibility, and adaptation.

Standing ever politely (Putin: “our Western partners”) yet resolutely against an Anglo-US -centric western world that is once again, a la the 1930s, suffering the consequences of another boom-bust debt deflation, and is, once again, being driven by elite vested interests towards the creative/destructive ‘growth’ solution of another world war, since 2014’s US-sponsored ‘colour revolution’ coup d’etat in brother nation Ukraine the Russian government has calmly shifted its primary focus away from trying (as ever) to befriend the West as respectful equals, and towards increasing self-reliance and cooperation with the East.

This has proven remarkably successful to date. Russia’s economy, though struggling, has not succumbed to the West’s economic sanctions. Unsurprisingly, neither has her people responded to their renewed economic difficulties by losing faith and moving to overthrow their government (as hoped by US neocons).

On the contrary, it is the EU nations, compelled by their dominant NATO ‘ally’ across the Atlantic to impose sanctions that appear to be suffering more. Numerous regions and opposition parties within the EU (e.g., France, Germany, and northern Italy) have begun to break ranks, visiting ‘annexed’ Crimea, and calling for restoration of normal trade and economic relations with Moscow. Importantly, Russia has succeeded in establishing ever stronger economic cooperation ties with the still rapidly-growing China, along with other Eurasian, African and South American nations.

The western Establishment’s now failing economic model has striven to dominate a unipolar world order through deregulated ‘free’ (i.e., increasingly rigged) market, dog-eat-dog competition – a kind of neo-Darwinian, brutal, amoral and unconscionable “survival only of the strongest” and most corrupt.

In sharp contrast both to neoliberal globalist capitalism, and to the lebensraum (“living space”) -seeking national socialism (“nazism”) of the 1930s, the Russian way is not expansionist. Instead, it strives to survive and thrive in the spirit of prince Pyotr Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor Of Evolution – through cooperation, and avoidance of confrontation wherever possible, in a mutually respectful, diverse, multipolar world order.

As the global balance of economic power continues to shift from the West to the East, it is the “Russian idea” and this, traditionally Russian approach to basic survival that may well come to serve as the world’s leading light, and the key to the salvation of us all.

Like this:

Neoclassical Economics: Creating A ‘Perfect’ Society .. In The Image Of Lucifer

I ended up finding myself being quite a believer in the whole idea of markets being equilibrating systems that bring supply and demand into balance, and all the problems of the system are caused by non-market interventions .. and when I look back on that period of my life, I realise that what economic education did at that stage was, it didn’t make me into an analyst, it made me into a zealot. You have a vision of a perfect society, and you then see your role as bringing about that perfect society by changing the real world to resemble the system you’re seeing in the textbooks. … [but] You take one step towards nirvana and you end up one step closer to hell.

Yesterday morning, the day after publishing my essay, the brilliant heterodox economist Professor Steve Keen tweeted an article by Bill Black, written in response to a blog earlier this year by Bloomberg writer Noah Smith. Mr Black’s article opened with the sentence, A blogger has trolled all heterodox economists as believers in the “occult”.

I was struck with great amusement, and a sense of the most profound irony.

Those with an interest in a broad sweep of circa 6000 years of history of humanity’s “magical equilibrium” belief systems — with a specific focus on the Sumerian, and 1400-1900 A.D. periods* — and enough capacity for independent thought to read my lengthy essay on The Magic Chain of Hermes, will discover why.

For others, this brief additional comment; neither it, nor my essay to be taken as all-encompassing, or as an attempt to fully evidence my argument. All that for my forthcoming book.

Neoclassical economic theory — and in turn, the ideology of neoliberal globalism — is based on a set of assumptions (beliefs) about human beings, and their behaviour. These beliefs are precisely analogous to the 1. Intellectual (i.e., Omniscient, with all of the Knowledge, Memory, Calculative and Predictive powers that implies), 2. moral, 3. attitudinal, and (thus) 4. behavioural characteristics of an occult Luciferian adept or magus .. as explained by the most famous occult magi throughout history themselves.

Neoclassical economists then assume that all “agents” in the economy embody precisely the same characteristics as this individual “rational agent” – a Luciferian magus.

Finally, in developing mathematical models that will allegedly predict the future, neoclassicals project these patently Luciferian analogues from microeconomics, into their macroeconomic models.

In other words, in deifying Man as a perfect “representative agent” of their god — Lucifer the “Light Bearer” — and projecting him as typifying all of humanity into their economic macrocosm, neoclassicals — in classic Luciferian style — apply an inversion of the inferred causal direction and relationship of the ancient Hermetic alchemical magic mantra “As Above, So Below”.

Neoclassical economics. “As Below, So Above.”

*In our hubristic, godless postmodernist age, few are either aware or bother to learn that from the Hermetic Reformation (“Renaissance”) through to the early 1900s, the occult ‘arts’ of Hermeticism, alchemy, Kabbalah, and esoteric mystery school ‘magic’ were immensely popular and hugely influential with the intellectual and elite classes. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that many of the iconic scientists, philosophers, and economists of this c. 500 year period were devoted afficionados of the occult arts, and/or members of secret societies devoted to ancient mystery school beliefs and rituals. Lacking any knowledge of this history, or of the occult philosophies and rituals, modern “thinkers” arrogantly dismiss that which they know nothing of.

A real transformation of economics first requires its voluntary death

“All of the greatest religions speak of the soul’s endurance beyond the end of life. So what then does it mean, to die?”

– Eisenheim, The Illusionist

Our world is dominated by an idea. That by performing evil actions, good will come of it.

It is the black sheep, the dark one of twins. They are the descendants of a higher idea, which is the wellspring (wyllspring; “to wish, will”) of a current of ideas known as apotheosis.

To become a god. Release from earthly life, ascension to heaven; death. In other words, a transformation. Elevation to a transcendent position. The apex, culmination, or climax of something; the highest point in its development.

It is also the name given to the idea of a “latent entity that mediates between our psyche [soul] and our thoughts”. Freudian psychology refers to this entity by the concepts of id, the ego, and superego. This is misleading, and an inversion, as we will see. The true mediator is known by the Wise as the Conscience.

The realm of human existence and daily striving known as economics has been dominated for the past quarter millennium by this dark idea of evil acts resulting in “the greater good”. Until this idea is exorcised instead of being exercised, there can be no genuine progress, no true evolution, no real transformation of economics.

This idea is false. It is an enchanting deception. It enchants by granting licence to our lower instincts, in the full knowledge (of the Wise, the Adept, and the Magus) that repeated actions form habits. By encouraging, by tempting us with the licentious idea that we can act on our lower, darker instincts, our ‘animal spirits’, in the interests of a “greater good”, the Magus of Evil Will knows that our conscience will be destroyed. Death by a thousand cuts. Not only will we (and society) not be transformed for the good by evil actions, on the contrary, our conscience becomes increasingly desensitised, inured, and in a sense dead to the harm caused by our evil actions. We are only drawn onwards and downwards, ever deeper, into ever greater acts of evil.

In his magnum opus Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855), nineteenth century French occult magus Eliphas Lévi explains an eternal truth, one that centuries of “thinkers” have ignored, or swept under the magic carpet of economic theory (emphasis mine):

Not only do the wicked torment the good, but unconsciously the good torture the wicked. The gentleness of Abel was a long and painful bewitchment for the ferocity of Cain. Among evil men, the hatred of good originates in the very instinct of self-preservation; moreover, they deny that what torments them is good, and, for their own peace, are driven to deify and justify evil. In the sight of Cain, Abel was a hypocrite and coward, who abused the pride of humanity by his scandalous submissions to divinity.1

The true Magus, whether of Good or Evil Will, knows that we cannot transcend evil by practicing it. We can only destroy our conscience, creating for ourselves an illusion of evil’s non-existence; becoming, as Lévi eulogises, a “free man” having “liberty” from the “servitude of conscience”. In precisely the same way that practicing evil actions forms evil habits, the practice of good actions forms good habits. Any notion of an inverse correlation is, simply, a lie. If we wish to experience more good in this world, then we must practice the good, and cease from practicing the evil.

But I digress.

While some still debate whether mainstream economics has taken Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” metaphor in The Wealth of Nations (1776) out of context, other, and I would argue, more influential early thinkers in the field once known as Moral Philosophy2 cannot be doubted in their clarity of expression.

In his Discourse on the Nature of Pleasures and Pains (1773), Italian Enlightenment philosopher, economist, and member of the Milanese nobility Pietro Verri stresses the positive function of pain. While pain is not good in itself, Verri says that “pain is the moving cause of all mankind” and so “good is generated by evil”.3

Fellow Italian Giammaria Ortes appears at a casual glance to reverse the order of causation. Or does he? In Della Economia Nazionale (1774) he writes that “The wealth of a nation corresponds with its population, and its misery corresponds with its wealth. Diligence in some compels idleness in others. The poor and idle are a necessary consequence of the rich and active.. .”4

A defrocked Camaldolese monk, libertine, and contemporary of another infamous Italian monk, the magician, alchemist, occultist and swindler Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, the Venetian Ortes is a most interesting, though lamentably lesser known figure in the history of economic philosophy. Karl Marx exalts him in Capital as “an original and clever writer”, “one of the great economic writers of the 18th century.”5 As we will see, his ideas, while undeniably “clever”, are not original. They are very ancient. Their origin, transmission, and far-reaching influence on humanity’s body politic should – like the study of cancer – compel our undivided attention.

If Ortes were living in our time, we would most likely see him employed in a “leading university”, an international money-lending institution like the IMF, or a neoliberal “think tank”. Many of us would, not inaccurately, refer to him as a shill for the oligarchy. Others of us, even less charitably, might call him a Useful Idiot for the 0.01%. Ortes was “closely associated with one of the most important salons or ridotti of the Venetian aristocracy”, the conversazione filosofica e felice (“philosophical and happy conversation group”), “the ideological arm of a closely allied group of Venetian oligarchical families.”6

From the beginning of his magnum opus, Ortes presents an argument that can only be useful to those wishing to promote the convenient-for-oligarchy idea that sovereign (i.e., papal; today, government) intervention can not contribute to material progress for humanity. Ortes provides a rhetorical segue echoing down to our time in the “Don’t tread on me!” anti-government howlings of libertarians, laissez-faire capitalists, Ayn Rand acolytes and others of similar ilk, by the simple expedient of insisting on the futility of any efforts to do so:

[N]ational economy is a matter which cannot be improved in any way by any particular action, and all attempts by persons seeking to organize national economy according to a better system, as regards provision or increase of goods, have to end up as useless efforts.7

Instead of projecting useless systems for achieving the happiness of people, I shall limit myself to investigating the reasons for their unhappiness.8

In the eighteenth century Age of ‘En-light-enment’, as in all ages, it was of course rather easier to “happily” spout let-us-do-nothing arguments for the status quo when your snout had been buried deep in the oligarchy’s trough.

Over one hundred years before Léon Walras, the alleged pioneer of the idea of “competitive equilibrium” and what has come to be known as the General Equilibrium Theory of neoclassical economics (1874), Ortes promoted the core idea of universal equilibrium, a zero-sum ‘higher’ unity arising from the antagonism of opposites – an ancient occult magic belief system – as a rationalisation for the alleged inevitability of inequality in social wealth, all under the guise of what Marx styled a “general natural law”9 (emphasis mine):

In the economy of a nation, advantages and evils always balance one another: the abundance of wealth with some people, is always equal to the want of it with others: the great riches of a small number are always accompanied by the absolute privation of the first necessaries of life for many others.10

The good therefore, understood as the possession of goods in excess of what is needed, can only be expressed between the individual and the commonality as the number zero, and since there is an inevitable lack of goods for some if these are to be abundant for others, this good can only appear as a mixture of economic good and evil, which tends neither to one nor to the other, or as the vector sum of forces which, operating with equal energy in different and opposite directions, destroy each other and resolve themselves into nothing.11

The observant reader will note the remarkable analogue of Ortes’s theory to a host of widely accepted general equilibrium economic beliefs in our day, such as “perfect markets”, and the fundamental ‘laws’ of supply and demand. Perhaps the most important analogue however, is to the assumptions of financial intermediation theory; a primary rationalisation – most useful for money-lenders – for the pretence that banks and debt don’t matter, since banks, according to the theory, act only as mediator between two opposites – savers and borrowers.

You may detect more than a hint of the idea of deification, of man becoming a god (apotheosis) manifesting in this self-serving theory of bankers being a kind of Kristos, an invisible mediator between God (good, wealthy) and man (evil, poor).

However, as proven empirically for the first time in modern history by Professor Richard Werner12, the real truth is that, progressively, slowly but surely, over millennia, ‘alchemists’ have apotheosised a now “Too Big To Fail” global domination system wherein they – the ‘Masters of the Universe’, ‘doing god’s work’ – represent something even greater than just a deified and transcendent, mediating Man-God. Instead, with the 1971 closure of the “gold window” backing (i.e., materially limiting the issuance of) the $USD as the world’s reserve currency, the 0.01% now represent an analogue to the very apex of the Trinity – the Infinite Creator Himself.

Readers of my earlier essays on the ancient origins and fraud-enabling ‘magic’ of double-entry bookkeeping (here, here, here) will also note the precise analogue of Ortes’s “vector sum of forces” theory to the symbolic representation of what I have christened the Paradox of Opposite Perspectives (POOP, or POP) embedded in double entry bookkeeping-based ‘money’ creation ex nihilo (“out of nothing”):

The primeval sages, when seeking the First of Causes, beheld good and evil in the world; they considered the shadow and the light; they compared winter with spring, age with youth, life with death, and their conclusion was this: The First Cause is beneficent and severe; it gives and takes away life. Then are there two contrary principles, the one good and the other evil, exclaimed the disciples of Manes. No, the two principles of universal equilibrium are not contrary, although contrasted in appearance, for a singular wisdom opposes one to another. Good is on the right, evil on the left, but the supreme excellence is above both, applying evil to the victory of good and good to the amendment of evil.

Omnipotence is the most absolute liberty; now, absolute liberty cannot exist apart from perfect equilibrium. Magical equilibrium is hence one of the first conditions of success in the operations of science, and must be sought even in occult chemistry, by learning to combine contraries withoutneutralising them by one another. Magical equilibrium explains the great and primeval mystery of the existence and relative necessity of evil. This relative necessity gives, in black magic, the measure of the power of demons or impure spirits, to whom virtues practised upon earth are a source of increased rage and apparently of increased power.13

Ortes had first written on general equilibrium and the zero-sum antagonism of equal and opposite ‘forces’ twenty years earlier (1754), in a short tract titled Calcolo de’piaceri e de’dolori della vita umana (“A Calculation of Pleasures and Pains of Human Life”). Here we find another quite remarkable analogue to el modo vinegia (the “Venetian Method”) of double-entry bookkeeping.

Ortes’s exposition moves from a set of hypotheses on [the] human body and on the relation between the physical and the moral constitution, which seem to be derived from Cartesian philosophy. There is also a strong analogy between Hobbes’s and Ortes’s explanation of the origin of sensations. The body is made by more or less elastic fibres and by fluids. When all fibres are in a steady state, fluids freely circulate within the body. This circular flow equilibrium goes along with a state of psychical indifference: a state which seems to be more hypothetical than actual, but nevertheless possible. The contact of human physique with external objects alters the state of fibres, overtending or overrelaxing them, and necessarily driving to a disorder in the circulation of fluids, felt by the mind as pain. Pleasure in [sic] nothing else than the impression produced by a contrary movement of fibres, reestablishing the original state (Ortes 1754: 288-89). This restoration can have two possible effects: either pleasure disappears with the new equilibrium and indifference is felt by the mind (Ortes 1754: 289-90), or the contrary movement which had produced pleasure continues beyond the point of equilibrium, thus altering the state of fibers and producing new pains (Ortes 1754: 292). Therefore, pleasure has a quantitative limit given by the amount of pain it removes. One of the examples given by Ortes is the same that manuals of microeconomics often give to explain to undergraduate students the meaning of Gossen’s laws: hunger which becomes indigestion once the satiety point is reached (Ortes 1754: 307-8). On the contrary, there are no limits to the extent of pain: every pain has a “fecundity” of its own, to the extent that the disorder in fibres can be communicated by fluids to other fibres, and so on in a chain reaction effect.

The assertion that the state of tranquillity can be altered only by pain (Ortes 1754: 307) leads Ortes to conclude that every kind of pain is a positive sensation, whereas pleasure should be defined as a negative sensation, i.e. the reduction of pain (Ortes 1754: 305).

Ortes’s originality can be found in the statement that pleasure is not a condition of tranquillity but a quantity of movement which restores tranquillity.14

For readers who may be unfamiliar with the rules of double-entry bookkeeping, the following chart shows how the entries made on a Balance Sheet are precisely analogous to the rationale of Ortes’s circular flow equilibrium theory of hedonistic calculus.

It requires but a little reflection to see clearly what Ortes was trying to do. By proposing a theoretical correspondence of a universal trinity of paired opposite ideas – physical Pleasure and Pain; the Abundance and Want of material “good” (i.e., possession of wealth); and the moral opposite ideas of Good and Evil – the debauched monk and Venetian oligarchs’ ideological thinker was, from at least as early as 1754, trying to quantify, that is to say, to measure morality.

It is important to note that Ortes sought to measure morality – a perspective of the Higher (non-physical, spiritual) world – by means of hypothetical a priori analogues drawn from the (necessarily finite; that is, limited) perspectives of the Lower world. In other words, Ortes was projecting analogues drawn from the material microcosmos on to the immaterial macrocosmos.

Today, economists do exactly the same thing, in projecting microeconomic analogues (“principles”, “laws”) into macroeconomic models. As the king who is claimed to have received the Wisdom of God and is reverenced to this day in the symbolic Double Triangle of Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun”:

Mercurius Trismegistus begins his admirable symbol known under the name of the “Emerald Table,” by this threefold affirmation: “It is true, it is certain without error, it is of all truth.” Thus, in physics, the true confirmed by experience; in philosophy, certitude purged from any alloy of error; in the domain of religion or the infinite, absolute truth indicated by analogy: such are the first necessities of true science, and Magic only can impart these to its adepts.

As we have already said, according to the sole dogma of the Kabbalah, that which is in visible nature reveals that which is in the domain of invisible nature, or secondary causes are in strict proportion and analogous to the manifestations of the First Cause.

Nature also has four motions produced by two forces which sustain each other by their tendency in an opposite direction. Now, the law which rules bodies is analogous to that which governs minds, and that which governs minds is the very manifestation of God’s secret – that is to say, of the mystery of the creation.

As we have already said, there are two palmary natural laws – two essential laws – which, balanced one against another, produce the universal equilibrium of things. These are fixity and motion, analogous to truth and discovery in philosophy, and in absolute conception to necessity and liberty, which are the very essence of God.

Does not human life present itself also under these four phases or successive transformations – birth, life, death, immortality? And remark here that the immortality of the soul, necessitated as a complement of the tetrad, is kabbalistically proved by analogy, which is the sole dogma of truly universal religion, as it is the key of science and the universal law of nature.

Every individuality is therefore indefinitely perfectible, since the moral order is analogous to the physical, and since we cannot conceive any point as unable to dilate, increase and radiate in a philosophically unlimited circle.15

It should not escape our notice that embedded in Ortes’s moral calculus there are two rather tempting ideas; a paradoxical duality that, from a ‘higher’ perspective, can be seen as a unity of opposites; one that again represents a powerful analogue to the Paradox of Opposite Perspectives in double-entry bookkeeping. These two ideas would doubtless serve as a soothing salve for the seared consciences of the merchants and money-lenders of the Venetian oligarchy: for the wealthy, “the possession of goods in excess of what is needed” actually represents a return to the original state of man (freedom from pain/evil; perfect equilibrium; the number zero; a god-like state of psychical tranquillity and indifference); for others, pain (e.g., the pain of debt) should be thought of as a positive (‘credit’) “movement” or sensation.

Following this chain of reasoning/sophistry then, it is not too difficult to see how, some 250 years on, we find ourselves observing tens of millions actually believing that their favourite “Prosperity Gospel” televangelist, “Christian” businessman, or “conservative” politician simply must be a good man – “approved of God”, indeed – by virtue of his enormous wealth.

According to Jane Gleeson-White (Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance), “Our modern urge to measure everything dates back to the late Middle Ages when a ‘radical change of perception’ took place in which mathematics, Venetian bookkeeping, and [monk, magician] Luca Pacioli played a key role. .. [O]nce you can measure something, then you have a quantitative or numerical representation of your subject which you can manipulate and experiment with, no matter how great its errors or omissions.” 16 (emphasis mine)

In other words, what you can measure, you can control. At least, you can con-vince yourself (and others) that it is so. After all, it does appear to be so with material examples of measurement; why not with the immaterial as well? Indeed, have not the Ancient and Wise clearly advised that the earthly is a mirror (though darkly) of the heavenly? “That which is above is like or equal to that which is below,” say the magi.17

It stands to ‘reason’ then, that if you can find a way, by analogy, to measure morality – if you can measure Good (“God”) and Evil (“Satan”) – then you can control, that is, attain power over the forces of Good and Evil.

Hedonistic (or “felicific”) calculus is usually attributed to the English philosopher, legal scholar, and founder of so-called “utilitarian [i.e., useful] ethics”, Jeremy Bentham. His efforts, like those of Ortes, can hardly have failed to find favour with the money-lending oligarchy. Indeed, we must acknowledge the great historical significance of the sublime eloquence and cunning casuistry of Bentham, in something other than its useful role in the promotion of his utilitarian calculus. It was also the catalysing force for the final capitulation of the remaining vestiges of sincere community-spiritedness within elite opinion, with regard to the traditional legal restrictions on the practice of usury (since Bentham, conveniently and happily rebranded under the more ‘positive’ appellation of “interest”).

In Defence of Usury (1788) he argued against “the Impolicy of the Present Legal Restraints on the Terms of Pecuniary Bargains”. Bentham basically opined that what had been considered legal protections against the predations of money-lenders – protections proven to be a genuine necessity for millennia of human history – are instead “Restraints to the Progress of Inventive Industry”.

Liberty, you see, must include a “right” for “free” individuals to offer and/or accept an offer of usurious (etym., a serpent’s biting) “bargains” with other “free” individuals. As usual with Benthamite notions of “useful” ethics, this nod and a wink to evil is allegedly for the greater good. In this especially egregious example of casuistic reasoning (also known as “special pleading”) for the inversion of traditional moral values, serpentine “pecuniary bargains” are now necessary for the greater good of “Progress of Inventive Industry”.

Usury – like the “positive” pain of Ortes – is a “necessary evil”, don’t you see? It is actually “good” for “progress” toward the apotheosis of Inventive Industry. Without the disequilibrating pain of compounding debt, we would have no incentive to work, to constantly “invent” new (or copied) products and services and convince others (by fair means or foul) to buy them (whether needed or wanted or not). In other words, without the “necessary evil” pain of debt that, having “a ‘fecundity’ of its own”, is constantly growing in a “chain reaction effect” (i.e., compounding “interest”) – a type of pain that has no quantifiable limits, according to Ortes, economics textbooks, and many economists – without this “necessary evil”, we would have no ongoing need to compete with each other for money, or to seek “pleasure” (the “reduction of pain”) in the acquisition of money, and so, in the repayment of debt to the money-lenders, spend our lifetimes in a great apotheotic quest – to restore ourselves to our original “higher” equilibrium state of perfect tranquillity.

Clearly the much-lauded Jeremy Bentham was not so great or original a thinker as some have chosen to believe. A sophist, casuist, and intellectual enabler of the money-lending class would appear to be a more accurate appellation. Indeed, it has been soundly argued that “in the entire school of British Philosophical Radicalism after the time of the American Revolution – including Malthus, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), James Mill (1773-1836) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) – there is virtually nothing that cannot already be found in Ortes. The British empiricists were, as usual, obliged slavishly to plagiarize their decadent Venetian originals.”18

Karl Marx offers us a further insight into the “Enlightenment” world of the British empire, where we see that indeed nothing has changed; then, as now, public opinion was invariably moved by the tide of eloquent but unoriginal plagiarists shilling for the oligarchy (emphasis mine):

If the reader reminds me of Malthus, whose “Essay on Population” appeared in 1798, I remind him that this work in its first form is nothing more than a schoolboyish, superficial plagiary of De Foe, Sir James Steuart, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace, &c., and does not contain a single sentence thought out by himself. The great sensation this pamphlet caused, was due solely to party interest. The French Revolution had found passionate defenders in the United Kingdom; the “principle of population,” slowly worked out in the eighteenth century, and then, in the midst of a great social crisis, proclaimed with drums and trumpets as the infallible antidote to the teachings of Condorcet, &c., was greeted with jubilance by the English oligarchy as the great destroyer of all hankerings after human development. .. With the exception of the Venetian monk, Ortes, an original and clever writer, most of the population theory teachers are Protestant parsons.19

If Bentham et al merely re-presented ideas that had first been advanced by Ortes when Bentham was still a child, then where did he get them from? Although praised by Karl Marx a century later as “an original and clever writer”, we have now seen that Marx’s acuity with regard to Malthus seemingly abandoned him with regard to Ortes; the Venetian “charlatan and mountebank” had promoted little more than eloquent self- and banker-serving analogies to the Venetian Method of double-entry bookkeeping.

Around the turn of the 16th century and the high point of the Hermetic Reformation20, better known to us today as the humanist Renaissance (“rebirth” in French), Europe’s most famous living artist, the genius Albrecht Dürer produced a masterful work entitled Allegory of Eloquence*.

A curator at the British Museum informs us that Dürer’s treatment of the subject is “based on a sketch by Hartman Schedel after an antique bas-relief, in his ‘Collectanea’. Schedel’s source for this was the Italian antiquarian and epigraphist, Cyriacus of Ancona (c. 1391-1450). In the legend, used by the ancient Greek satirist Lucian, Hermes (or Mercury) is described ensnaring his audience with the golden chain of his eloquence.”

The trickster god referred to in an early Arabic source on alchemy as “Hermes, the Sage, the Babylonian”21, is depicted by Dürer consistent with classical Greek and mystery school tradition: rising on winged feet, wearing a winged traveller’s hat and bearing in his right hand the double serpents and baculus of the caduceus, symbol of universal generation, eternal life, and universal equilibrium. Over his head shines a six-pointed star, representing the Double Triangle and Keys of Solomon, the “magical law of two forces constituting universal equilibrium”22. Golden chains extend from Hermes’ tongue to the ears of his listeners, including a cleric, a soldier, and a nobleman wearing the familiar tall hat (later silk top hat) satirised throughout the capitalist era to the present day as a quintessential symbol of the oligarchy – that is to say, of the upper class, big business, and bankers.

An inscription in Greek above his captive audience reads: “Hermes, the son of Maia, the son of Zeus, Three Times Great, helper, strong, shining light, who works through law, shepherd, slayer of Argo, with a baculus of gold, herald of the gods, diviner, bearer of fortune, hegemon, who makes profits, a thief, a merchant, who is in the marketplace.”

Eliphas Lévi explains what is the secret of the allegory of Hermes’ golden chain (emphasis mine):

To make the Magic Chain is to establish a magnetic current which becomes stronger in proportion to the extent of the chain.

The Great Work in Practical Magic, after the education of the will and the personal creation of the Magus, is the formation of the magnetic chain, and this secret is truly that of priesthood and of royalty. To form the magnetic chain is to originate a current of ideas which produces faith and draws a large number of wills in a given circle of active manifestation. A well-formed chain is like a whirlpool which sucks down and absorbs all. The chain may be established in three ways – by signs, by speech and by contact. The first is by inducing opinion to adopt some sign as the representation of a force. .. Once accepted and propagated, signs acquire force of themselves.

Printing is an admirable instrument for the formation of the magic chain by the extension of speech.

The magic chain of speech was typified among the ancients by chains of gold, which issued from the mouth of Hermes. Nothing equals the electricity of eloquence. Speech creates the highest intelligence in the most grossly constituted masses. Even those who are too remote for actual hearing understand by sympathy and are carried away with the crowd.

Two things, as we have shown, are necessary for the acquisition of magical power – the emancipation of will from servitude and its instruction in the art of domination.

We have already said that the devil is not a person. It is a misdirected force, as its name indicates. An odic or magnetic current, formed by a chain of perverse wills, constitutes this evil spirit, which the Gospel calls legion, and this it is which precipitated the swine into the sea – another allegory of the attraction exercised on beings of inferior instincts by the blind forces that can be put in operation by error and evil will.

All enthusiasm propagated in a society by a series of communications and practices in common produces a magnetic current, and continues or increases by the current. The action of the current is to carry away and often to exalt beyond measure persons who are impressionable and weak, nervous organisations, temperaments inclined to hysteria or hallucination. Such people soon become powerful vehicles of magical force and efficiently project the astral light in the direction of the current itself; opposition at such a time to the manifestations of the force is, to some extent, a struggle with fatality.

Hence there are two kinds of bewitchment, voluntary and involuntary; physical and moral bewitchment may be distinguished in like manner. .. Bewitchment by means of currents is exceedingly common, as we have observed already; morally as well as physically, most of us are carried away by the crowd.

The great work is, before all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future; it is especially the perfect emancipation of his will, assuring him universal dominion over Azoth and the domain of Magnesia, in other words, full power over the universal magical agent.

This solar agent subsists by two contrary forces – one of attraction and one of projection, whence Hermes says that it ascends and descends eternally. .. To be acquainted with the movement of this terrestrial sun in such a manner as to be able to take advantage of its currents and direct them, is to have accomplished the great work and to be master of the world. Armed with such a force you may make yourself adored; the crowd will believe you are God.23

It should be fully apparent by now that these two “contrary forces” of “attraction” and “projection” are simply eloquent metaphors for money-lending; the ‘Magical Art’ of “projecting” and “attracting” money.

Indeed, in a chapter entitled “Mastery of the Sun”, Lévi informs us that (emphasis in original):

The work consists entirely in projection, and projection is accomplished perfectly by the effective and realisable intelligence of a single word. There is but one important operation, and that is sublimation…24

The thoughtful reader should need no reminder that “Magical equilibrium is one of the first conditions of success” in the great work, and that this ‘magic’ is achieved specifically by “learning to combine contraries without neutralising them by one another”. In other words, by working (like Hermes) “through law” to ensure the “attraction” of payment of compounding usury, in addition to the “neutralising” repayment of the original “projection” of the principal.

In The Eternal Hermes: From Greek God to Alchemical Magus, Antoine Faivre provides an important detail concerning the magnetism of “Hermes in the Western Imagination”. He informs us that the French Renaissance humanist writer and monk François Rabelais “knew that Pan was descended from Hermes and Penelope, and had heard tell of the oracle of Hermes at Pharae” (emphasis mine):

Ludwig Schrader has furnished an excellent study of this subject, his interest being particularly in Panurge. .. Panurge can be identified with Hermes.

Panurge is not only connected to the tradition of Hermetic magic: he also has something of the humanist Hermes, the savant of his time. This does not prevent him from being at the same time a sort of alchemist, for he claims to possess the Philosophers’ Stone: “I have a philosophical stone which sucks money out of purses as the magnet attracts iron.” And in his speech in praise of debtors, he speaks of the “joy of the alchemists when, after long labors, great care and expense, they see the metals transmuted in their furnaces.”25

In my forthcoming book I present a controversial yet robustly-evidenced argument: that the fundamental principles of economic theory and practice – the ‘laws’ of supply and demand, market equilibrium, ‘rational’ self-interest, ‘utility’ (“pleasure”) maximisation, hedonistic calculus, and more – are all derived from the “universal science” of Hermetic-Kabbalist Luciferianism.

This whirlpool of ideas is perhaps better known to us today under the rubric “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” of twentieth century occultist and “Wickedest Man in the World”, Aleister Crowley.

George Cooper (Money, Blood and Revolution) recently observed that “One of [Thomas Kuhn’s] greatest insights came in recognising how paradigm shifts are usually led by laymen and resisted by the incumbent experts who have a vested interest in preserving the status quo. When new thinking is needed, Kuhn showed the experts are usually intransigent, dogmatic and unwilling to objectively criticise their own ideas.”26

In a similar vein, Eliphas Lévi warned that “it is weariness and danger to strive against the fluidic currents stirred up by chains of wills in union. .. The man who is eccentric in his genius is one who attempts to form a circle by combating the central attractive force of established chains and currents.”27

Quite so. No matter how compelling the evidence, no doubt there will be not inconsiderable resistance to my argument that not only economic theory but also a multiplicity of widely-held philosophistries including dialectics, humanism, secularism, liberalism, materialism, evolutionary theory, political science and sociology, are all linked by a golden chain of eloquence veiling a universal temptation – the Pride-ful idea of self-directed apotheosis (“progress”) through values-inversion and practicing evil – passed down through time by the keepers and manipulators of the “universal wisdom” and their Magic Chain of “impressionable and weak” Useful Idiots of “perverse wills”.

American historian and philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford says that the ultimate values of the capitalist era – Power, Profit, Prestige – can all be traced back to Egypt (emphasis mine):

Within a few centuries, the new capitalist spirit challenged the basic Christian ethic: the boundless ego of Sir Gales Overreach and his fellows in the marketplace had no room for charity or love in any of their ancient senses. The capitalist scheme of values in fact transformed five of the seven deadly sins of Christianity – pride, envy, greed, avarice, and lust – into positive social virtues, treating them as necessary incentives to all economic enterprise; while the cardinal virtues, beginning with love and humility, were rejected as ‘bad for business,’ except in the degree that they made the working class more docile and more amenable to cold-blooded exploitation.

In sum, where capitalism prospered, it established three main canons for successful economic enterprise: the calculation of quantity, the observation and regimentation of time (‘Time is Money’), and the concentration on abstract pecuniary rewards. Its ultimate values – Power, Profit, Prestige – derive from these sources and all of them can be traced back, under the flimsiest of disguises, to the Pyramid Age. The first produced the universal accountancy of profit and loss; the second ensured productive efficiency in men as well as machines; the third introduced a driving motive into daily life, equivalent on its own base level to the monk’s search for an eternal reward in Heaven. The pursuit of money became a passion and an obsession: the end to which all other ends were means.28

I argue that the chain of transmission of this magnetic “current of ideas” can be traced back through the adepts of the Art of Alchemy to its earliest recorded origin in the Sumerian-Semitic cult worship of Inanna-Ishtar, the androgyne goddess of Love and War, whose priesthood and royalty strove after ultimate god-like power over the elements – and of course, their fellow man – via esoteric knowledge, self-deification, and the symbolic manipulation (through ritual inversion of values) of the ‘universal’ paradox of achdut hashvaah or coincidentia oppositorum, the Unity of Opposites (emphasis mine):

It is well established that the beginnings of science in general started in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and from thence they were transferred into Greece. It is useful therefore to investigate the beginnings of chemistry in these two ancient civilizations since this may reveal to us the origin of several theoretical concepts in both alchemy and chemistry.

The Babylonians believed that the universe originated from water. They noticed also that the universe contains opposite elements. Thus there is day and night; light and darkness; male and female; hot and cold; wet and dry. There is also the good and the evil, and in general, there is for every feature an opposite one. It is also possible to divide matter into two opposite elements, and from these two opposite elements everything can be generated.

The Babylonians were keen observers of the stars; and from their early history they believed that the gods are in control of the planets. They believed also that the sun, the moon and the other planets [CM: five then known; with sun and moon, seven “gates”] have influence on what happens on earth. This was the beginning of astrology. The influence of the planets involves metals; thus sun influences gold, and the moon influences silver, and the other planets control the remaining metals. This linkage between the planets and metals was the biggest contribution of the Babylonians to alchemy or the Art.

The principle of the two opposites of the Babylonians was inherited by Greek philosophers who were thinking about the nature of matter and whose theories were based in part on the Babylonian concept.29

Central .. to the Mesopotamian perspective is the existence of antitheses and contradictions, the delicate balancing of order and disorder.30

The Babylonian elites’ quest continues to this day, mirrored in post-Renaissance humanism’s continuing belief in the doctrine of progressive transformation towards individual, social, economic, and political apotheosis; not by force of Conscience, guiding man’s exercise of willpower to progressive growth in the practice of good and cessation of the practice of evil, but by force of human Ego, directed by “enlightened” human Intelligence – possessed only by an elite cabal of fully “liberated” “priesthood and royalty”, of course.

Same as it ever was.

In her introduction to Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, the “gifted storyteller and professional folklorist” Diane Wolkstein discusses the legend of Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld, the earliest written evidence for a preoccupation with apotheosis. Her words hint at the magnetically-attractive power of this idea; the notion of the rebirth to deity, through Self-empowerment, and a dead-conscience attitude of “whatever it takes” (emphasis mine):

I read Inanna’s descent again and again. I was drawn to the story of a woman who gave up, at seven successive gates, all she had accomplished in life until she was stripped naked, with nothing remaining but her will to be reborn.31

How positively inspiring!

Unfortunately, Wolkstein herself has been bewitched by the magnetism of clever sophistries passed down through the aeons by the purveyors of the golden “chain of perverse wills”.

The Inanna myth says no such thing:

The moral which an ancient hearer of The Descent of Inanna might take away from it, far from a `symbolic journey of the self to wholeness’ is the lesson that there are consequences for one’s actions..32

Indeed, Wolkstein’s own representations of co-author Samuel Kramer’s original translations of the Inanna myth, are the strongest evidence giving the lie to her enchanted enthusiasms. Rather than Inanna being the powerful independent “liberated” heroine exalted by modern feminists, a Queen who impliedly saved herself through her “will to be reborn”, the story as rendered by Wolkstein herself irrefutably evidences the fact of Inanna being saved from the Underworld by the intervention of a pair of genderless golems (“demons”33), two androgynous mediators representing a unity of opposites sent by her Father … and even then, she was not permitted to leave without providing “someone in her place”:

From under his fingernail Father Enki brought forth dirt.
He fashioned the dirt into a kurgarra, a creature neither male nor female.
From under the fingernail of his other hand he brought forth dirt.
He fashioned the dirt into a galatur, a creature neither male nor female.
He gave the food of life to the kurgarra.
He gave the water of life to the galatur.
Enki spoke to the kurgarra and galatur, saying:

“Go to the underworld,
Enter the door like flies.
Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, is moaning

…

The queen will be pleased.
She will offer you a gift.
Ask her only for the corpse that hangs from the hook on the wall.
One of you will sprinkle the food of life on it.
The other will sprinkle the water of life.
Inanna will arise.”

The kurgarra and the galatur heeded Enki’s words.
They set out for the underworld.
Like flies, they slipped through the cracks of the gates.
They entered the throne room of the Queen of the Underworld.

…

The corpse was given to them.
The kurgarra sprinkled the food of life on the corpse.
The galatur sprinkled the water of life on the corpse.
Inanna arose….

…

Inanna was about to ascend from the underworld
When the Annuna, the judges of the underworld, seized her.
They said:

“No one ascends from the underworld unmarked.
If Inanna wishes to return from the underworld,
She must provide someone in her place.”34

But again, I digress.

Some scholars believe that the ceremonial inversion of values practiced by the Inanna-Ishtar cult may have served a positive social purpose (“They remind us of the existence of rule”35). However, later initiates in the mystery school religions came to believe in apotheosis by “education of the will” in habituated evil acts; that only in this way is it possible to achieve “emancipation of the will”, to “liberate” the “Absolute Reason” of the Individual from “the servitude of conscience”.

Inanna asked:

“What is this?”

She was told:

“Quiet, Inanna, the ways of the underworld are perfect.They may not be questioned.”36

Outside of the initiatory mystery schools in Freemasonry et al, and secret societies for future US presidents at Yale University, within the realm of economics there has in recent times perhaps been no finer example of the magnetic power of eloquence to deify and justify (“rationalise”) acts of evil, deaden the Conscience (“liberty”), and convince the “impressionable and weak” of the ‘relative’ merit of inverting the moral order in the interests of attaining “the greater good” of illusory utopian aspirations, than the words of economist John Maynard Keynes in his aptly titled Essays on Persuasion (emphasis mine):

I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue – that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.

But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.37

Robert H. Bork (The Antitrust Paradox) wrote that “One of the uses of history is to free us of a falsely imagined past. The less we know of how ideas actually took root and grew, the more apt we are to accept them unquestioningly, as inevitable features of the world in which we move.”

Indeed. So let us conclude back where we began.

Not only the realm of economics but indeed our entire world of ‘thought’, is now dominated – possessed, if you will – by an idea. That by slowly killing our Conscience in a death of a thousand cuts, through repeated, habituated, sometimes enchanted but often plain willful acts of evil, somehow a “greater good” will come of it.

The lesson drawn from deep dark history and the earliest written records of humanity, the lesson that I aim to prove beyond all shadow of doubt in my forthcoming book, is that this idea is false … and the truly Wise have always known it to be false.

It is a deliberate manipulation. An inversion of the truth.

A wise old prophet said:

Woe (judgment is coming) to those who call evil good, and good evil;Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Woe (judgment is coming) to those who are wise in their own eyesAnd clever and shrewd in their own sight!38

Perhaps we should leave the final word to the Babylonians themselves. In the Descent of Inanna, we are told that as she languished a corpse on a hook of the wall of the Underworld, her faithful servant Ninshubur – “my constant support, my sukkal who gives me wise advice, my warrior who fights by my side” – following Inanna’s instructions given her “If I fail to return”39, went to the temple of Enlil, and prayed to the Air god to save her:

“O Father Enlil, do not let your daughter
Be put to death in the underworld.”

Father Enlil answered angrily:

“My daughter craved the Great Above.
Inanna craved the Great Below.
She who receives the me of the underworld does not return.
She who goes to the Dark City stays there.”40

Marco E. L. Guidi, Pain and Human Action: Locke to Bentham, (1994), p.17 – Guidi examines theories of human action based on pain and pleasure from Hobbes to Pareto with particular reference to Verri and Ortes. He posits that what has been viewed as a single or ‘sensationalist’ tradition was in fact the result of two different approaches to analysis of human decisions. He contrasts these as ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ hedonism (emphasis mine): “Pain and pleasure are for Hobbes (1588-1679) the result of the interaction between two causal mechanisms: the action of external bodies on senses, and from there to the head and to the heart, and the “vital movement” of human body. The confrontation of these causal mechanisms takes place in the heart. Pleasure is experienced when the external causation seconds the internal movement, while pain is the result of the clash between the two mechanisms. However, pain and pleasure are not passive sensations. Human bodies react to the influence of pleasurable and painful events, and are urged to approach the objects which are pleasant, or to escape from those which are unpleasant (Hobbes A: 49-50)1. For this reason, the prime mover of action are inclinations and adversions, i.e. “foreseen and expected” pleasures and pains (Hobbes B: 147; C: I.vi).” p.4

James D. Heiser, Prisci Theologi and the Hermetic Reformation in the Fifteenth Century, 2011

Vladimír Karpenko, Alchemy as donum dei, HYLE – International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, Vol. 4 (1998), No. 1, pp. 63-80 – “In the Tenth Discourse of his treatise Al-Fihrist,[12] An-Nadim (A.D. 987) writes, after the introductory basmallah, about the origin of alchemy [§ 1]: ‘The adepts of the Art of Alchemy, … assert that the science of the Art was first discussed by Hermes, the Sage, the Babylonian …’.”

I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces. I am not a giant physically; I shrink from pain and filth and vermin and foul air, like any other man of refinement; also, I freely admit, when I see a line of a hundred policemen with drawn revolvers flung across a street to keep anyone from coming onto private property to hear my feeble voice, I am somewhat disturbed in my nerves. But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.1

— Upton Sinclair, Letter to the L.A. Chief of Police, 17 May 1923

A classic proverb holds that “there is honour among thieves”.

For 99% of thieves, this proverb is actually true.

But there is a minority of thieves, alas, who have no honour at all. They are the thieves who create 97% of our money—in the form of debt—through the magic of double-entry accounting.

Thanks to the added magic of compounding interest owed on all the money, the total amount of debt owed worldwide has grown so large, it is now impossible to repay. Although, truth be told, because all of the ‘money’ is actually debt, it has always been impossible to repay, because repaying all the debt would eliminate all the ‘money’.

As two authorities on the matter—one, the High Priest, the other, a mere deacon of the Federal Reserve Bank—intoned way back in the Great Depression:

If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.2

If all the bank loans were paid up, no one would have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of currency or coin in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks for our money. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp upon the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible – but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.3

If you were not previously familiar with the illogical, paradoxical, circular pseudo-realities that arise from double-entry accounting, then Welcome to Numberland, Alice.

Even though this is the objective truth, the irrefutable reality of how the debt-based ‘money’ system works, most of us continue to believe in the impossible.

That is to say, we continue to believe—falsely—that we are bound to honour our debts.

Famed anthropologist and author of Debt: The First 5000 Years, David Graeber explains:

That common-sensical notion not only that it’s moral to pay one’s debt, but also that morality essentially is a matter of paying one’s debts can bring people to justify things that they would never think to justify in any other circumstance.4

Economist and historian Michael Hudson says that the bankers have known about this anthropological discovery since at least the 1980’s:

They found out that the poor are honest. Almost the only people who believe they should repay their debts are the poor people. And in fact, the less money you have, the more you believe the debts should be paid.5

Nearly 2500 years ago, the man widely acknowledged to be the foundational figure for Western science, philosophy, law-making, and mathematics, gave this instruction to lenders and borrowers:

No one shall deposit money with anyone he does not trust, nor lend at interest, since it is permissible for the borrower to refuse entirely to pay back either interest or principal.6

It turns out that Plato was right.

It is permissible—legally—for all the world’s borrowers to refuse to honour all their debts to all the world’s banks.

The reason why is because—legally—no bank has lent us any money.

In fact—according to the banks themselves—legally, all the money in the banks was lent by us to them.

(Feeling dizzy Alice?)

According to Black’s, the most widely used law dictionary in the United States7, “money” is legally defined as (emphasis added):

A general, indefinite term for the measure and representative of value; currency; the circulating medium; cash. “Money” is a generic term, and embraces every description of coin or bank-notes recognized by common consent as a representative of value in effecting exchanges of property or payment of debts. Hopson v. Fountain. 5 Humph. (Tenn.) 140. Money is used in a specific and also in a general and more comprehensive sense. In its specific sense, it means what is coined or stamped by public authority, and has its determinate value fixed by governments. In its more comprehensive and general sense, it means wealth.8

Rather than lending us legal money, bankers have misled and deceived us into renting a record of a promise to pay legal money.

They have misled and deceived us into believing that their record of their promise to pay us money, is actually money (legal substance).

They have also misled and deceived us into believing that their record of their promise to pay us money, is actually our money (ownership title).

And here’s the real kicker.

Despite the fact that they claim to have loaned us all this money, thanks to the magical paradox at the heart of double-entry accounting, they also claim, simultaneously, precisely the opposite to be true — that we have actually loaned all that money to them.

(We will return to this later – think “bail-in”).

It really does beg the question, “Does anyone really own money?”

Because the ‘money’ that the bankers have purportedly ‘loaned’ to us—that we have loaned to them—is neither money in true legal substance, nor is it certain just whose ‘money’ it actually is, we can confidently assert that the bankers have

misrepresented the sign, true substance, and true value of the “consideration” component of the loan agreement,

engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in the withholding and/or obfuscation of key information pertaining to their capacity to deliver on their promise of performance,

made false, misleading, and deceptive statements and representations in the inducement of borrowers to enter into an agreement of exchange of mutual performances (the “offer”),

failed to deliver on their promise of performance (“failure of consideration”),

engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct in obfuscating their failure to deliver on their promise of performance, and

You may well be feeling—like Alice—rather incredulous about this, and questioning how it is possible. After all, surely the financial accounting standard-setters and our government regulators would prevent such things from happening?

Alas, no.

Just as with double-entry accounting—the magical foundation on which the entire parasite worm-ridden edifice of global banking and finance is built—the truth is exactly the opposite.

Ever since the “financial reporting revolution ushered in by financial economics ascendance in the 1960s”9 and the “increasing hegemony of neo-liberal ideology over issues of public policy and regulation ushered in by Reagan and Thatcher”10, the financial accounting standards bodies and government regulators have aided and abetted the bankers in their misleading and deceptive conduct:

Well documented is the growing dominance of the social sciences and of business education by neoclassical economic ideas (Ferraro, Pfeffer, & Sutton, 2005), which form the intellectual foundation of neo-liberal morality and politics.11

Transforming accounting in the academy into a neoclassical economics sub-discipline (Reiter & Williams, 2002), which the financial reporting revolution accomplished, has impoverished accounting discourse as a moral discourse (Reiter, 1998; Williams, 2000) and led to the understanding of accounting as a practice whose purpose is to cohere with a world made natural by the discourse of neoclassical economics.12

For at least four decades, the private not-for-profit (oh really?) financial accounting standard-setters (FASB, IASB) have continued to actively aid and abet the bankers’ misleading and deceptive conduct, despite frequent accounting-enabled corporate scandals and resultant financial crises, and the often stunning revelations and criticisms presented in the peer-reviewed accounting literature (emphasis added):

The savings and loan failures in the late 1980s and 1990s, the Enron, Global Crossing and Tyco corporate scandals, Andersen’s demise, and the sub-prime mortgage crisis all relate to deception [emphasis in original]. All such scandals involved to varying degrees the telling of accounting untruths…13

Accounting representations are true if they predict, or true if they abet the privileged group to pursue its objectives, a quite different notion of true than implied by the popular usage…14

[M]any accounting signs no longer refer to real objects and events and accounting no longer functions according to the logic of transparent representation, stewardship or information economics.15

[A]ccounting today no longer refers to any objective reality but instead circulates in a “hyperreality” of self-referential models.16

The accounting sign now precedes (and even creates through its ‘‘sign value’’) the referent that it once purported to represent. It is no longer an abstraction or an appearance of any ‘‘real’’ thing. It is its own pure simulation, making circular references to other models which themselves make circular references to accounting signs.17

Are such disasters [Enron] necessary before accountants begin to realise how indispensable it is to make a distinction between conceptual representation (including accounting representations and misrepresentations) and the reality to be represented?18

As mentioned earlier, around 97% of so-called ‘money’ in ‘circulation’ (hint: it doesn’t actually circulate in the true meaning of the word; it magically disappears in one place, and magically reappears in another) is not actually money (“coined or stamped by public authority”)19. It is bank-created ‘credit’.

By legal definition, bank ‘credit’ is not real money.

Bank ‘credit’ is actually just an electronic double-entry accounting record of the bank’s promise to pay real money.

However, this objective legal reality has not prevented the FASB/IASB from aiding and abetting the bankers in their false, misleading and deceptive misrepresentation of the mere sign of money as actually being real legal money, and consequently inducing prospective borrowers into forming loan agreements for the purpose of gain for the bankers (“interest”, “yield”, “return”) on the basis of this fundamental misrepresentation.

Consistent with common usage, cash includes not only currency on hand but demand deposits with banks or other financial institutions. Cash also includes other kinds of accounts that have the general characteristics of demand deposits in that the customer may deposit additional funds at any time and also effectively may withdraw funds at any time without prior notice or penalty. All charges and credits to those accounts are cash receipts or payments to both the entity owning the account and the bank holding it. For example, a bank’s granting of a loan by crediting the proceeds to a customer’s demand deposit accountis a cash payment by the bank and a cash receipt of the customer when the entry is made.

This codification of the bookkeeping entry record of bank ‘credits’—the record of a promise to pay cash—as actually being (“is“) ‘cash’, is in clear contradiction of the legal definition of money.

An electronic record of a promise to pay cash

is not “coin or bank-notes”,

is not “coined or stamped by public authority”,

is not “currency” or “cash”; that is to say, not in any sense that is or would be “recognized by common consent“ (Black’s) as being actual “currency” or “cash” (i.e., coin or bank-notes; legal tender).

According to the International Institute of Certified Public Accountants (IICPA) in an Open Letter to both the FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) in May 2013, this codification of banks’ electronic ‘credits’ as (not representing but) actually being “cash” is also in breach of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS); (emphasis added):

Demand deposits referred to by the public as “cash in bank” is recorded and reported by monetary financial institutions (MFI) in units of account by double-entry bookkeeping in a process which the MFIs call “lending” — but which is effectively a nullity — by debiting loans receivable and crediting demand deposits.

These so created units of account are then denominated at will in dollars, pound sterling, euros, etc., depending on the terms of the documentation or underlying promissory note, or whatever is the legal document giving rise to this type of “lending,” using whatever is the name of the currency in the jurisdiction in which it takes place, but legal tender the “demand deposits” are not.

These so-called “loans receivable” that give rise to these so-called “demand deposits”

are not assets within the meaning of economic resources,

do not have the capacity to eventually result in cash inflows (cash being legal tender or central bank money, so called federal funds),

are created bank-internally and therefore in violation of self-dealing,

have no cost basis,

have no market value except by way of assignment against like-kind-nullities to or from other MFIs never settled in legal tender or central bank money.20

If that were not enough, it gets worse.

Astonishingly, the FASB’s ASC §305-10-55-1 Implementation guidance tumbles even further down the rabbit hole of logical and legal unreality—not to mention amorality—in stating what the bank customers’ perspective of so-called “Cash and Cash Equivalents” “shall” be (emphasis added):

Cash on deposit at a financial institution shall be consideredby the depositor as cash rather than as an amount owed to the depositor.

This codification by an unelected, private not-for-profit financial accounting standards organisation of how the general public “shall” consider their so-called “cash on deposit”, is in clear contradiction of

the legal definition of “money”,

the common understanding of the word “cash” as meaning a government-created tangible entity (i.e., legal tender notes and coins),

the banks’ own balance sheet records affirming all customer “deposits” as being a Liability (i.e., amounts owed to customers),

the banks’ perspective regarding ownership title (claim) on this so-called “cash” (a perspective backed, incidentally, by the Financial Stability Board in its G20-wide “resolution regime” in preparation for “bad” bank bail-ins).

The implications of this are disturbing.

The FASB has ex post facto codified that banks may consider bank ‘credits’ (a record of a promise to pay cash) as actually being “cash” for accounting purposes; that the customers’ perspective of bank ‘credits’ “shall” be that those ‘credits’ are (literal physical) “cash”, and, that they are not amounts owed to them by the bank, wholly irrespective of whether or not the banks have actually met (or will actually meet) their legal obligations under contract law.

While the FASB might imagine that it can—without any practical or legal implications—surreptitiously decree how hundreds of millions of “depositors” “shall” view their “deposit”, the truth of the matter is that an immediate contradiction, and critical conflict of interests arises.

Quite simply, the FASB’s ASC §305 Cash and Cash Equivalents codification does not even comply with the rules of double-entry bookkeeping, much less the common understanding of the true meaning of the word “cash”. It has potentially far-reaching implications for the legal standing of banks’ claims on borrowers for the (re)payment of “consideration” (plus compounding “interest” in addition), in that it serves to highlight the false, misleading, and deceptive statements and representations of banks in the formation of loan contracts.

To illustrate this critical point, the following diagram depicts all of the perspectives (views), concepts, and realities that are inherent in a double-entry bookkeeping-based ‘account’ of the bank Lender – customer Borrower relationship. Keeping in mind that—since the time of the Stoics—it has been considered an “indispensable” fundamental of philosophical and scientific discourse to express clearly the difference and relation between the threefold notions of the sign (sound, written symbol, etc), the conceptual idea (meaning) communicated by the sign, and the real (the actual object or event behind the concept)21, all three notions — “Sign”, Concept, (Real) — are clearly marked for each party and each perspective of the two-sided, legally-binding mutual “exchange” of promises-to-pay.

Consider carefully the following:

Irrespective of whether one adopts the perspective of the Borrower or the Lender, any so-called “cash” or “demand deposit” appears only as a sign (sound, name, symbol, i.e., a mis–representation) of the Lender’s IOU,

The real object or event underlying the purported existence of “cash in bank” (or “demand deposit”), is the Lender’s IOU (promise-to-pay); in other words, the real object or event is the Lender’s promise of performance (“consideration”), and not “coin or bank-notes” “stamped by public authority”,

The sign (“cash in bank”, “money”, “funds”, “$”, “€”, “£”, etc) that is purported to the Borrower by the Lender to not merely represent but to actually be the underlying reality, is false, misleading, and deceptive,

As the Borrower has been induced to accept the offer to contract with the Lender on the basis of false, misleading, and deceptive representations, the loan contract is unenforceable,

The Lender’s IOU is simultaneously an Asset of the Borrower, and a Liability of the Lender (contradicting §305-10-55-1),

As a loan agreement requires inter alia the exchange of mutual performances, and the Lender’s obligation is defined as necessarily preceding that of the Borrower, the recording and reporting of the Lender’s IOU as a Liability demonstrates that the Lender has failed to deliver on its promise of performance (“consideration”), i.e., to provide the Borrower with money (“coin or bank-notes” “stamped by public authority”); therefore, the loan contract is unenforceable.

There is one final matter to consider.

Since early 2009, the unelected Financial Stability Board (FSB)—perennially chaired by Goldman Sachs alumni—has been working with G20 governments and financial regulatory authorities to implement a global banking “resolution regime”. One of the Key Attributes of this scheme is the passage of legislation granting governments the power to “bail-in” the “deposits” of bank customers in order to save or reestablish a “bad” bank or “systemically-important” financial institution.

Despite the reality that all so-called “customer deposits” have in fact been created ex nihilo by the banks through the act of “lending” to customers, and are reported as a Liability of the banks on their balance sheets (i.e., as ‘money’ still owed to the customer), both the banks and the FSB’s global banking resolution regime consider the customer to be a “creditor” of the bank.

In other words, rather than the bank having purportedly loaned (but not yet delivered) ‘money’ to the customer, the bank and the FSB deem that the situation is precisely the reverse – the customer has purportedly loaned his/her ‘money’ to the bank (note the implicit assumption of customer ownership).

Believe it or not, there is an explanation—albeit a perverse, morally abhorrent and unconscionable explanation—for this, and in turn, for how the creeping global preparations to legally steal the “deposit” assets of bank customers (refer above diagram) is able to be “justified” by the banks, the financial and political authorities, and the unelected, BIS-funded, Goldman Sachs alumni-chaired FSB.

At the heart of the matter is the ever-present paradox of perspective inherent in the BabylonianDuality Principle on which double-entry accounting is based.

Banks are able to create new (so-called) ‘money’ ex nihilo through the loan origination process. As this is recorded using double-entry accounting, every new loan results in a new Asset and a new Liability on the banks’ balance sheet records.

However, because banks act both as new loan (thus, new ‘money’) originators and as financial intermediaries, there is no way of disaggregating the Liability side of any bank’s balance sheet in order to clearly distinguish between those “deposits” that have arisen in consequence of that bank’s own lending (so-called), and those “deposits” that have arisen in consequence of that bank’s intermediation (i.e., ‘transfers’ of ‘money’ from one customer account to another customer account at the same bank, or, from the customer accounts of other financial institutions to customers of the bank).

Whether or not any particular unit of any particular “deposit” amount could truthfully be defined as ‘money’ loaned to the bank by a customer, or, loaned by the bank to a customer, is dependent on knowing with complete certainty how and when each and every unit came to be recorded in the customer account. The only customer account for which such certainty is possible, is a customer account created by the bank at the moment of first originating a loan, and, before any new entry for even one single fractional unit of the denominated currency has been either added to, or subtracted from that customer account.

There is one further exception – an account established for one of the bankers’ favourite clients—arms dealers, drug cartels, mafioso, and other criminal organisations such as the CIA—at the first moment of the client handing over real legal tender cash notes at the bank to open the account.

In any event, since even a ‘transfer’ of ‘money’ from one bank to another still has the same ultimate origin—an out-of-nothing creation of an electronic record of a mutual exchange of promises to pay—then from a whole-of-banking-system perspective it really doesn’t matter; all so-called ‘money’ on ‘deposit’ is simultaneously owned by the customers, and by the banks.

(Oh yes, by the way, since that ‘money’ is really just a record of a promise, and we all buy and sell mostly by way of ‘transfers’ entered in these electronic records, then, strictly speaking, we are all thieves, because none of us is actually giving real legal money in payment to our fellows in exchange for their goods and services, unless we actually “cash-in” the bank’s “offer” (promise) to pay us real money, in order to pay our fellow in real legal money – government-created legal tender cash notes and coins).

The bankers—aided and abetted by the FASB, FSB et al—resolve this ownership contradiction by choosing to have their cake and eat it too. That is to say, the bankers take advantage of the embedded paradox of perspective in double-entry accounting, and arbitrarily decide who will be deemed the true owner of any and all “deposits” (i.e., who is debtor and who is creditor), depending—of course—on what suits the bankers’ best interests at any given moment in time.

In good times, it’s business as usual — the bankers will consider your “deposit” account to represent ‘money’ owned by and owed to you, and will—if they can—honour their promise to give you real legal cash on demand (but will far more commonly just ‘transfer’ your ‘credits’ to someone else’s account).

In not so good times, the bankers will consider your “deposit” account to represent a loan from you to the bank … and so, as you are now just an “unsecured creditor”, what you thought was your ‘money’ in the bank can (and will) be legally purloined, to “bail-in” the “bad” bankers.

One might well ask why it is that the generally “unsophisticated” (i.e., misled and deceived) customers of banks should be made to suffer any loss or damage arising from a “bad” financial institution’s employees or executives’ malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance, and/or from their failure to use record-keeping systems and methods adequate to the task of clearly distinguishing between bank assets, and customer assets.

The answer lies (pun intended) in a relatively recent accounting concept advanced by the standard-setters, in consequence of the neoclassical / neo-liberal ideological takeover of economics, accounting, and financial reporting. This wonderfully Orwellian idea is called “decision usefulness” (emphasis added):

For standard-setters the overriding criterion of decision usefulness, which FASB and IASB narrowly define as helping to predict cash flows, has replaced veracity in financial reporting as an end in itself. The ascension of decision usefulness as a public rationale for FASB actions has produced for the profession the situation .. [of] .. simultaneous committing to two, often conflicting ideas of truth…22

Decision usefulness has been and continues to be applied in accounting to justify its activities, a singular emphasis on an accounting discourse which we view as highly problematic and seriously impairing accounting as an ethical practice.23

Truth poses a genuine problem for accounting, one that cannot be so easily finessed by appeals to decision usefulness.24

[A]ccounting standard setters have replaced a responsibility for truth with decision usefulness, which, given the ambiguity of decision usefulness, effectively absolves them of responsibility for the consequences of their actions.25

In his recently released book The End of Alchemy, former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King makes a similar observation (emphasis added):

“Regulation has become extraordinarily complex, and in ways that do not go to the heart of the problem. … Much of the complexity reflects pressure from financial firms. By encouraging a culture in which compliance with detailed regulation is a defense against a charge of wrongdoing, bankers and regulators have colluded in a self-defeating spiral of complexity.”26

Upton Sinclair famously said that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it”.

Indeed, there are many who will doubtless object to the argument here presented—that it is legally permissible for all the world’s borrowers to refuse to honour all their debts to all the world’s banks—with a reflexive, ill-considered, tediously shallow and laughably ironic dismissal that “this is all just semantics”.

Quite so.

Semantics (from Ancient Greek: σημαντικόςsēmantikós, “significant”) is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relationship between signifiers—like words, phrases, signs, and symbols—and what they stand for, their denotation.27

The entire matter pivots on the question of truth. More specifically, the legal argument pivots on demonstrating that there has been a mis-representation of the truth, by the bankers.

What is the true reality, the real object or event that has been promised to the borrowers by the bankers—that is to say, what is the true object or event as commonly understood by the borrowers—and re-presented to the borrowers by the bankers using the signifiers ‘money’, ‘cash’, ‘funds’, ‘credit’, ‘deposit’, ‘sum’, ‘amount’, ‘$’, ‘€‘, ‘£‘, etc?

Has there, or has there not, been any false, misleading, or deceptive statements or representations made by the bankers to the borrowers, in order to induce the borrowers to agree to accept the offer to contract?

Have the bankers made any false, misleading, or deceptive statements or representations to the borrowers, that obfuscate a failure, potential failure, potential unwillingness, reasonably foreseeable or known incapacity of the bankers to deliver on their promise of performance?

And finally, have the bankers gained any advantage (“interest”, “yield”, “return”) from the borrowers through the use of false, misleading, or deceptive statements or representations?

May God grant the reader wisdom, and a sound conscience, to carefully and prayerfully judge the matter for themselves.

********

Regina: This isn’t your pixie dust is it.Green: Well when you think about it does anyone really own pixie dust?Regina: The fairies are quite proprietary about it. If they found out you stole it they would…Green: Don’t worry about me. This is about you.

– Once Upon A Time

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DISCLAIMER: This essay is the opinion of the author. Nothing stated or implied in this essay should be construed to be legal or professional advice. For questions concerning your specific situation, please consult a qualified legal advisor.